The new assistant principal was a plump, white person, in whose face a reddish mustache and gold-rimmed spectacles—his own personal addenda, as it were—were the only salient features. Not brilliant, he was rising by character, evinced in an unconquerable optimism. "Keep a-smiling, brother—it costs you nothing!"—so Mr. Geddie's roguish eyes seemed continually to say. But perhaps they seemed to say it more than normally to-day, by way of striking a happy average with the quite unsmiling late incumbent.
Mary, during her brief tenancy, had stored here a long accumulation of printed matter, chiefly duplicate files of "The New School," with sundry assorted leaflets of the Education Reform League. Her task to-day was to go through these files, destroy what was no longer useful to her, and pack the rest for removal. Her successor had thoroughly prepared for her. There on the floor was the packing-case, there on the floor was a table to sit at, there against the wall stood a stepladder. But Mr. Geddie would not weary in well-doing. The moment he understood what the proposition was, as he termed it, he said that, of course, he would help Miss Wing. Refusals drowned in a sea of smiles. Allow Miss Wing to climb that rickety ladder, and lift down those heavy stacks of magazines? Positively, she must not ask him that. Trouble? A pleasure, Miss Wing; a genu-wine pleasure.
He had his way, as people of strong sunny character always do. Mary, having overcome the impulse to make an excuse and abandon the enterprise, sat at the little table. Kind Mr. Geddie went up and down the ladder, fetching her dusty armfuls to sort over. In the intervals, for he had the shorter end of the job, he was down on his knees beside her, brightly stacking discarded "New Schools" into piles against the wall.
The work went forward steadily, on the woman's part almost in silence. That, however, made no difference. It was the man's power to be able to talk more than enough for two, and he did. As the old assistant principal grew steadily more quiet, the new one seemed increasingly buoyant. And it seemed to Mary that she had been listening to his conversation for a long, long time, at the moment when she heard him suddenly exclaim, from the ladder:—
"Well, well! Look who's here! Come for the spring-cleaning, Mr. Garrott? Ha, ha!"
She, in her inner absorption, had failed to hear the approaching feet. But at that she raised her head, with a kind of jerk.
"Don't mind the dust, Mr. Garrott—it eats all right! Ha, ha! Walk in!"
Mr. Garrott stood silent in the office door, looking at Miss Wing. The eyes of the old friends briefly met. Something in the young man's appearance vaguely arrested Mary Wing. She had noted, as her glance lifted, the torn glove on his right hand. Now she was remotely aware that the face looking back at her so intently appeared somehow subtly changed: there was something faintly wrong with it, it seemed. But such details Mary's consciousness hardly registered at all. All in one flash, she wondered how he happened to be here, thought how good it was of him to come, and knew that she had never been less glad to see anybody in her life.
"Good-afternoon," said she.
"How'do, Miss Mary?" said Charles; and then started forward. "How are you, Mr. Geddie? I seem to be rather late to help with the good work."